Aaron Rodgers has kept his distance from his parents for years, a topic he has addressed publicly but rarely explained. That changed because of a special someone in his past, because of whom Rodgers seems to be mending his relationship with his family.

“On Aaron Rodgers & his family, they had been working towards reconciliation for a while,” renowned author and The Athletic columnist Ian O’Connor posted on X. “Rodgers invited parents Ed & Darla to his Pleasant Valley High School Hall of Fame induction in April & introduced them to the crowd to applause, thanked them for their support. In my book, Rodgers spoke of embracing his father at the Lake Tahoe celebrity golf tournament in 2023 and expressing their love for each other and called it “a special moment,” the first time they had contact in nearly 9 years.

“That opened the door. At the time, Rodgers called a reconciliation “definitely possible” and a matter of timing. The timing was right last night for the Steelers quarterback to make it public with his photos on Instagram. Rodgers’ juco coach, Craig Rigsbee, was among the longtime friends who encouraged him to reunite with his family. Aaron praised Rigsbee at the PV induction ceremony for the impact he’s had on his life.”

It wasn’t known why he distanced himself, but the quarterback opened up a little bit on the matter in his Netflix docuseries, ‘Aaron Rodgers: The Enigma.’

“At times when you have some dysfunction or some separation in your family life, you have to kind of reparent yourself and give yourself what you didn’t get or wanted to hear more of when you were a kid,” he said. “And I think for me, I just wanted to hear, ‘I’m proud of you.’”

There also seems to be a rift between him and his brother, Jordan Rodgers, the reality TV star who won The Bachelorette in 2016. While on The Bachelorette, Jordan said that Aaron separating himself from the family was “just the way he’s chosen to do life.”

In 2017, nearly a year later, Ed Rodgers told The New York Times he hadn’t spoken to Aaron since late 2014. Still, the door toward reconciliation never fully shut.

“People ask me, like, ‘Is there hope for a reconciliation?’ I say, ‘Yeah, of course, of course,'” he said. “I don’t want them to fail, to struggle, to have any strife or issues. I don’t wish any ill-will on them at all. It’s more like this: We’re just different steps on the timeline of our own journeys.”

Earlier this week, Aaron shared photos of some time he spent with his parents, his brother, Luke, and his niece and nephew. “Bonding week,” he wrote in the competition.

Coming back to Rigsbee, the former Butte College coach might be a big reason why Aaron Rodgers is even playing football. No other head coach recruited Aaron out of high school for college. Per ESPN, Aaron was nowhere near the ideal quarterback that colleges would want on their rosters. But Rigsbee walked to the Rodgers’ household in Chico, kickstarting the recruitment of a quarterback who would become one of the best in the NFL.